Why I Don’t Speak the Purest Form of My Home Language

Relating to my mother tongue and culture

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

Every time I am asked what language I speak, I hesitate. I tell them Sepedi, but I make sure to emphasize the dilution. Then they usually say it makes sense because I do not have the cadence, the accent is wrong, or I don’t know the idioms. They follow up with a question about where I am from originally; I give them a province, and they argue that no one who speaks the language comes from there. Then I tell them I am a mix of two cultures. They ask me what language I speak, and then they tell me I am from that tribe. There is no “mixed culture” — you take the tribe and language of your father. I already knew that; it is a common cultural practice. Even my cousins don’t really consider their mother’s side of the culture; they took their fathers’. Having moved around a lot as a child and not speaking my father’s language made me a sort of outsider to both cultures.

When I started understanding English and caring about Western culture, I was shocked when people would say they are 3% this, 15% that, or 22% thereafter. I wondered why they would break themselves down into so many percentages. If that person’s father is Irish, then they are just Irish, but that would assume the father’s own parents were both Irish.

Another time, a colleague said in an open-plan discussion (the kind we have when the bosses are not around to rain on our parade) that we no longer have “pure breeds” of people. What she meant is that we have become cross-cultural. We date and marry people from other cultures so that the chances of meeting a person whose parents are both from the same tribe are, I don’t want to say slim, but not high.

At that time, we were in a province populated mostly by Nguni people, and different languages were spoken. For example (and this is a bit of TMI) all the guys I was getting acquainted with spoke Nguni languages. If it had worked out with one of them, our house would be multicultural. They would speak their father’s language more than mine because children are born to continue the legacy of the father, and not necessarily mine. My mother wouldn’t even consider my children an extension of my bloodline; they would be extending my husband’s culture.

I was always embarrassed, especially in school, during oral speeches, research, and other language requirements. I was very aware that I didn’t speak the language in its purest form. When asked about my surname, I didn’t know where it originated; I didn’t know, and I didn’t even ask. To this day, I don’t want to be asked that question. In high school, I knew a guy who had the same surname as me, and for some reason, people expected us to be close. They would ask if I knew him, and then he would text me on Facebook to ask if I knew about “that area.” Surnames are common in particular areas of a province, so people assume they know where you are from if you have that name.

I have put together a list of the reasons why I think I don’t speak my language purely:

1. I come from a family of mixed bloods (yeah, it sounds weird). Firstly, my family has always been mixed and multicultural, with cousins who speak different languages (assuming their fathers wanted that). So we have the culture, but somewhere it’s not the same and it gets complicated — or maybe not. I don’t speak my father’s language. I only speak my somewhat “zig-zaggy” mother tongue.
2. We never spoke a pure language. I never spoke a pure language; there was always a bit of this and a bit of that. One time I had Sepedi homework and I asked my grandmother for help; I got a zero, lol. I was pissed and embarrassed to tell people that my grandmother helped me, because grandparents are assumed to be the ones who hold the culture and the purest form of the language. This further cemented my relationship with my home language, but in my grandmother’s defense, she spoke a mix of languages and not pure Sepedi, so we were in the same boat.
3. I grew up in different areas where people spoke different languages. Growing up in a particular area, you end up speaking that language; you pick up on it and your own language is no longer “clean.” For example, in one of the neighborhoods I grew up in, the residents were Zulu but they spoke Sepedi — not pure Sepedi, but the kind mixed with township slang. In their own home, it was the mother who spoke isiZulu, but they spoke to each other in Sepedi. Even though my cousins and I grew up in a township, they talked to each other in their father’s tongue. I grew up in townships where people spoke different languages but would use a diluted Sepedi because it is the most common one. When you go over to their houses, you hear their languages; now I can hear and understand most languages even though I can’t respond. When I met my other friend, we would each speak our own language; we could hear each other but would respond in our own tongues. People found that funny and asked why we didn’t speak one common language, and we would respond that we can hear each other, so we don’t need to.
4. I am not a cultural person. I am not obsessed with finding out about my cultures. My argument is that I can count up to four generations back on my maternal side and I am sometimes told stories about my family. I am currently learning my paternal side’s clan names. Maybe I haven’t come to a point where I need to know everything, but I assume some elder somewhere will tell me if I have questions.

Of course, you could argue that I am an adult and that I will be part of the next generation passing down cultural practices to younger adults. If all of us are not cultural, we will be a cultureless people somewhere in the future. To that, I would say that is why we have libraries and the internet (though my father argues that the cultural information in books and on the internet is what white people wrote and not necessarily the truth, but I digress).

During weddings and funerals, I still follow the rules. I sit with the older women around the fire and I learn by seeing. Usually, when someone does something wrong, they are called away from public eyes and brought into the private fire area where the women sit, and they are told, “We don’t do that in our culture.” I learn from the mistakes of others and absorb information like a sponge. I think the wanting to learn and “cleaning up” my language will come with age later on, as it did for some. No one wants to listen to a grandmother who speaks English during cultural events (I am just kidding). Knowing I am “mixed blood” has made me nonchalant about exploring both cultures. Maybe if I were a “pure breed,” I would be more grounded because it would be accessible to me on a multi-generational level. I am aware that just labeling me as belonging to one culture and not the other reduces my multiculturality and dimensionality. I know I will explore this journey later on.